Guys,
Erin, host of the Far From Eden YouTube channel, is doing a series on Esther Vilar's book, The Manipulated Man. The below post is a comment I left in response to her latest installment in the series, which ran this past Saturday night. It's my MGTOW story.
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Erin, for me, it wasn't hard to accept that I would never marry or have a family; it was simply a matter of logic and risk assessment combined with personal experience. I'll explain...
When I was younger and had my first car, I had a CB radio in it. That was the forerunner of social media. I'd often listen to the truckers' on channel 19, and I heard a TON of horror stories about how their exes had taken them to the cleaners in their divorces. Those stories got my attention.
Secondly, because my first car was a 1966 Chevy in good shape, I used to have guys come up to me all the time talking to me about it. Many of them were married guys who'd tell me about the classic car they'd once had; they'd fondly speak of their old Ford Mustang, Plymouth Barracuda, etc. The married guys spoke of their old cars in a sad, wistful tone. Why? They'd go on to say that their wives made them get rid of them. That got my attention too.
SO! So, I knew that, even as a young man, that marriage was a huge decision; it was something that could make or break me, so I'd better be careful. That said, I still believed that I could find a good woman; I could still get married if I were careful and deliberate. Like a young teenage boy playing baseball, I still had "The Dream" (of making it to the bigs); I still believed that marriage was possible.
Fast forward about 15 years, and I got falsely accused a couple of times. One false accusation was from a woman I'd dated; the other was from a female colleague who wanted me out. Though both shook me up and traumatized me, it was the one outside of work that really bitch slapped me with reality, as that's the one that got me into family court.
This gal I dated briefly made it known that she didn't want to see me. She didn't tell me; she ghosted me, basically. I was like, okay, I'll get on with my life. Then, she started FOLLOWING me! If I passed her on the road, she'd follow me. She drove by my house. She drove by my work. She'd show up where I hung out, even though that was away from where she lived. You get the idea. After this went on for a while, she called the cops, and she accused me of stalking her. The cops arrested me on that criminal charge, and they informed me that there was a restraining order against me.
That meant I had to go to two court hearings: one was in criminal court, and one was in family court. I had to go to criminal court to have the stalking charge adjudicated, while the family court was about whether or not to make the court order permanent. When a DV PPO is taken out, it's temporary; you're instructed to go to a hearing in 10 or 14 days time to determine if it'll be permanent or not.
For the criminal charge, that went well. The judge was scrupulously fair to everyone, which helped. Secondly, she didn't show up for the trial, so the charges were dismissed. It's a little more complicated than that, but that's the gist of how my criminal charges were handled. The details aren't relevant; what's relevant is family court, which I'll tell you about now. To make that long story short, my charges were dismissed with prejudice, meaning that they could never be brought against me again.
Family court is where divorces are handled. Domestic violence restraining orders are also handled in family court; it's in family court where the decision is made whether or not to make them permanent. Hint: they almost ALWAYS are made permanent! My case was during the latter half of the 1990s, which was post OJ. Judges would pass out restraining orders like candy, as they believed it was better to be safe than sorry.
My case came up at the end of the day; it was literally the last one handled. I'll come back to that. Because my case was handled at the end of the day, I saw everyone else's case ahead of mine. Boy it was an EYE OPENER! One, the judge favored the women all day long; all day, the women got favorable rulings. OTOH, the men got screwed. Here is but one example of what family court was like all day.
There was a memorable case that came up in the middle of the day. A couple was divorcing, and it wasn't pretty; to say it was acrimonious would be an understatement. The husband and wife told the judge about a heated argument they'd had. Hubby said that he was going to burn the house down. Wifey threatened to kill him, and she pulled a knife.Their kids, who were present, corroborated what was said and done during that argument; that is to say that these were uncontroverted facts. You can guess what happened next: the judge scolded the man for making terroristic threats, while totally ignoring and absolving the wife for hers!
Finally, it's late afternoon. Our case is literally the last one of the day, so only I, my mom, my attorney, my psychobitch, and the biased judge are left in the courtroom. Psyhcobitch got up and told a bunch of lies; she basically accused me of doing what she'd been doing to me over the past year. After she spoke, my attorney spoke. He began to argue a relevant legal point that could have and should have undermined the court order, and would have if we'd been in a fair courtroom. However, we weren't in a fair courtroom; there were kangaroos jumping around all over the place! As my attorney was speaking, the judge cut him off. You read that right; the judge CUT OFF my attorney in mid-sentence! He basically said that he didn't want to hear it, and he made the court order permanent.
A year or so later, when I was working on a long term temporary employment assignment to a company that was a household name back in the late 1990s, there was a woman at the company who didn't like me for whatever reason. One woman, who I was friendly with, was in charge of the temp group; we'll call her Katie. Towards the end of my time there, another woman, Mindy, took over. Mindy and I had never gotten along. We'd could barely be civil or cordial with one another. For me, it was no big deal; that happens sometimes.
So, I came in one morning, and all of a sudden, Mindy's acting all nice; she greeted me warmly, asked me how I was doing, and so on. Caught off guard, I played along and was polite to her too. While part of me was hoping that things would be better between Mindy and me, another part of me was wondering if she was up to something. It turned out that she was, and she'd engineered a false sexual harassment accusation against me. My assignment ended soon thereafter.
I was upset, of course; I was hurt. However, my assignment had lasted 3-4 months longer than originally planned. Secondly, the department head, who was above Mindy, knew that something shady had happened, so he put in a good word with my agency. My agency got me another assignment soon thereafter, I did well at that assignment; the company bought out my contract, and I worked there for 2.5 years.
As the comedian always says, I told you all that to tell you this: my life experiences taught me that women can be DANGEROUS! They taught me that, especially in family court, men have no rights. Between that and the fickle, flaky, and emotional nature of women, I knew that marriage was an almost impossible dream at that point. If I wanted to marry, doing so in the US was out of the question.
To wrap things up, I became a Passport Bro before it was a thing. I met a gal from Peru. We had a relationship that progressed to the point of living together down there for four months. I saw things about her personality that I didn't like, so I ended the relationship. It's a little more complicated than that, but that's another story. In August of 2018, I came back with a street cat my ex had rescued. I've been on one date since then; I've been on one date over the past 6.5 years. That was in September of 2023, and the date was a disaster. I've all but given up. I keep my eyes and ears open in the unlikely event I come across a unicorn, but I'm not holding my breath. I'll just live out the rest of my days as best I can. That's my story.
